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20th century. At the turn of the 20th century, it was defined by a shared
At the end of the century that shared cultural identity has become fractured
and is now defined by conflicting racial, ethnic, sexual and societal norms. For
most of the century this had been a gradual metamorphosis in the societal
role of the American male but World War II brought about that massive
societal change quickly. The popular culture of the time, especially the moody
film noir thrillers of the 1940's and 1950's, recorded that change.
In the 1944 film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo a young American aviator
tells his friends about his expectations returning home after the victory in
World War II. "When it's all over, just think, being able to settle down and
never be in doubt about anything."1 The typical World War II veteran was
optimistic that victory abroad would return him to his proper role and place
in society. The war had ended decades of economic stagnation, and winning
for a time, the fears and inadequacies that he had lived through as a child of
It was a heroic ideal that hadn't existed in America since the turn of the
century. Women and minorities had continued to carve themselves new
niches in the wartime economy and would not return to what was considered
their proper place before World War II. The veteran may have wished to
return to the America of his grandfather's day, but the post-war landscape he
would grow to inhabit, was colder, and far more cynical than he had ever
imagined.
A growing paranoia fueled by the hysteria of the Cold War, and the
vague unhappiness that suburban life would bring, would taint the
effervescent postwar climate. Though made only three years after Thirty
Seconds Over Tokyo, Edward Dymytrick's 1947 film Crossfire seems like
generations have passed in between the two films. It gives us a portrait, not of
the idyllic of the earlier film, but an America as violent and untrustworthy as
the environment the G.I. encountered in Europe during the War. The
epitomized this new post-war attitude, "A guy like me after the war hates
himself because he's scared to get going again."2 In the film a violent bigot
and fellow marine played by Robert Ryan frame Mitchell for the murder of a
Jewish character in the film. The film tackles the controversial issues of anti-
with itself from its victory overseas. Crossfire reflects the uneasy transition
that veterans made to civilian society and captures the darkly cynical mood
that permeated beneath the surface of post-war America. It is one of the finest
It was a year before Crossfire was released that French film critic Nino
Frank coined the term film noir to describe what he perceived as a current
trend within Hollywood wartime cinema.3 These "dark films" were filled
with characters whose ambitions and passionate obsessions rule their lives
and lead them to committ either moral or ethical transgressions that they are
invariably punished for at the end of the movie. Often noir films have a
message warning the audience not to overstep their societal obligations and
"film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art."4 She focuses on the
interpretation of female roles and stereotypes in film noir and how they
show the active progression of male roles during the century and the specific
The important element of film noir is that it follows a finite life cycle
American life that begins primarily with the end of the Great Depression, is
in no small way connected with the impressions of World War II, and ends
with the burgeoning social and political revolutions of the 1960's. Paul
having starting with The Maltese Falcon (1941), then reaching its pinnacle
with Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and ends with the superb epitaph Touch of Evil
(1958).5 If we were to examine these three very different films from varying
historical periods of the noir life-cycle, and examine them according to the
the process by which culture affects change in society, and is then effected by it
emerges.
personal search for the killer of his partner Miles Archer the tale quickly finds
him embroiled in a search for the priceless, jeweled encrusted artifact that the
title refers to. This "black bird" is sought out by a group of deadly eccentrics
who test Spade's personal, ethical and moral code. It is his masculinity that is
ultimately threatened.
The film, which was released in 1941, and the novel, which was
released in 1930, are both indicative of the progressive, social and political
ideals of the 1930's and early 1940's, and also the changing face of American
masculinity.
men at the turn of the century. When World War I ended in 1917, and the
the ramifications of that victory. Ernest Hemingway, like other writers of the
"Lost Generation", knew altogether too well of the veterans' conflicted inner
psyche. Hemingway had left for Europe, during the early days of the war, in
part to search for an arena to test his manhood. Even then the American
male had considered modern life contrary to the principles by which men had
traditionally won their adult masculinity. War was still considered the
ultimate testing ground. Hemingway, like many others, would return deeply
scarred from his experiences on the front. In his short story, "Soldier's
in civilian life and tries to disengage from the world, to live alone without
civilian life and illustrated a similar disaffection that other WWII veterans
would face.
dominant masculine ideal in America. The 1920's saw blacks and immigrants
slander. Blacks and immigrants were depicted as either "feminized and effete
or wildly savage hyper masculine beasts."7 It was an instinctual attack on the masculinity
"the Immigration Act of 1924, which passed after bitter controversy and
black and immigrant men were "feminized" to remove their perceived threat
By 1920 about one half of the college students and one-third of all
including the Great Depression in 1929, that would and severely damage the
On Friday, October 28, 1929 the U.S. Stock Exchange suffered one of the
greatest economic disasters of the 20th century. By the following Monday, U.S.
securities would lose 26 billion dollars in value.10 Between 1929 and 1932 the
income of the average American family was reduced by 40%, from $2,300 to
$1,500.11 Women were blamed for causing the Great Depression and
"fire the women . . .and hire the men. Presto! No unemployment. No relief
rolls. No Depression!"12
economic provider for their families, began to feel their reduced leadership
role as head of the American family. As a result, many men sought solace in
the comfortable familial environment of the home and their own, often
neglected, fatherhood:
"The workplace was too unreliable. . . to enable men to prove
redemption."13
The upbringing of these children, that would one day grow to fight in
their fathers and the manner in which they would pass on their changing
like society, employment, and family. After the Great Depression, masculinity
was "redefined away from achievement in the public sphere and reconceived
separation of the sexes in schools because they believed that masculine traits
femininity in a child.
the acceptable social levels of opposing traits in male and females. Certain
physical attributes and behaviors are used in these tests to distinguish "real
men" from not only women but also from the physical traits of effeminate
heterosexual men are different from women, and homosexual men are
different from heterosexual men, that women and homosexual men are
different in the same way from heterosexual men. Also, the traits that
homosexual men and women share can be measured and guarded against by
heterosexual men.
rather than what it was, and like a dual edged Sword of Damocles, American
does on itself.
and reflects the direct preoccupations that American readers had at the end of
the 1920's and early 1930's.Written in 1930 by the American crime novelist
Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. These purely American mysteries were
direct and forceful, featuring masculine detective heroes that prove and
define themselves by their ability to overcome the dangers that the narrative
burlesque: at one point in Red Harvest (1929), [he] spends all night
drinking gin with a blond floozy, takes a cold bath, and has a fight
Hammett's protagonists were often loners with a strict moral code that
may or may not be tied to a definite social order or common morality and this
who walks the mean streets of San Francisco and transcends the societal
mores of the conventional society that he dislikes and the criminal society
that he often admires. At the end of film, when faced with a rather difficult
about it. . . it's bad for business to let the killer get away with it. Bad
the effects of the Great Depression society itself and its institutions seemed no
longer to work. Spade seems to be saying that it is the individual and not
society who is ultimately responsible for the success and even the failure of
recurring trial of masculinity that Sam Spade endures and it is typical of the
popular mystery and detective fiction of the time. These stories usually
include:
women)."18
Spade serves as the reader's proxie who offers, through the sheer force of his
culture of the 1940's. The Maltese Falcon reflects the general unease that often
hangs between masculine and feminine gender roles. The film reflects the
manner in which American men were being acculturated at the time and is
clearly contemptuous of not only women but effeminate men. Other groups
that did not fit in with the narrow white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, middle-
the dominant societal challenge to the masculine ideal. The character Joel
Cairo, a stylish fop played by Peter Lorre in the movie, is one of three rather
The term "gunsel" has an apt meaning for the topic, especially by
tracing its transformation in usage. Since about 1915 the "gunsel" had been
clearly phallic gesture, and outsmarts Gutman's master plan to seize the
valuable "black bird" for himself. The falcon turns out to be a worthless piece
of lead, but that isn't important for the impact of the story. The Maltese
Falcon is resolved by the trials that Sam Spade meets. He is defined by all that
most film noirs they they help define Sam Spade, since is often defines
Spade has been having an affair all along, is the mother-like figure who seeks
to marry and save the male protagonist from himself. As comforting as her
role may seem she is the most threatening female figure of them all. She
comes to Spade after her husband's death and offers him stability and security
and he rejects her advances because she threatens his independence and self-
A professional barrier keeps Sam Spade and his secretary Effie Perrine
apart. Spade protects and shelters her but never makes any sexual advances to
because he realizes that no relationship with her could flourish and again she
would stifle his masculine independence. Effie is the female noir archetype of
In her guise as Miss Wonderly, as she is known in her first scene with
Sam Spade, or as the habitual liar Brigid O'Shaunessy, Mary Astor plays one
of the film noirs primary "femme-fatales" or fatal woman. The femme fatale
tempts the hero with romance and the sexual freedom of youth, which offers
a manner to placate his masculine independence and libido, but her own
savage sexuality usually destroys the film noir protagonist, although Sam
"We may find ourselves admiring her for she is indeed powerful,
suit her needs, but in this case is no match for either her own long neglected
In film noir the only female that suffers the penalty in the end is the sexually
active femme-fatale. These women are actually quite strong and independent
and one of the first instances, in popular film, where women are empowered
by their control over the weak male protagonists. Her power would grow
throughout the decade as feminine status in society would grow. The female
in film noir begins to take on the traditionally masculine role and becomes
the instigator. Men in film noir would tend to gravitate toward the
the ages of twenty-five and fifty . . . the time is 1940 to the present, with a
America and post-war American masculinity in film noir needs to follow the
Even though The Maltese Falcon is cited as having started the film
noir cycle, Sam Spade is not the prototypical noir hero. Humphrey Bogart's
Sam Spade has not yet lost his moral compass and is still the epitome of the
film noir protagonist is Walter Neff, the amoral insurance agent who
conspires to kill his lover's husband in Double Indemnity, or Joe Gillis, the
decadent leanings and easy money of silent screen star Norma Desmond in
Sunset Boulevard. They are both typical stereotypes of the later noir male
protagonists. Neff betrays his trusting employer and Gillis betrays Desmond
for a younger woman. Both movies are told by them wry flashbacks, Gillis or
Nefff being either dead or dying, and reminder of where their indiscretions
ambition. Compared to Sam Spade, Neff and Gillis would foreshadow the
decades. After years of depression and war, the American public was buoyed
by a newfound confidence that winning the war brought. The per capita
income had doubled from $1231 to $2390 per year from 1939 through 1945.24
relatively steady low of about 4.5% average during the same period, and more
public's confidence further and it was this assuredness that brought about the
drastic societal changes that would follow in the ensuing decade. Americans
accumulated an astounding $29 billion of savings in six years during the war,
starts never fell under 1.3 million annually, except once, for the remainder of
the 1950's."7 The federal government was able to create and fund new public
works projects that helped build roads that connected the inner cities to the
growing mass of suburban tract homes that veterans were buying. Secondly,
the G.I. Bill was passed that would impart a series of low interest home loans
communities.
The ultimate barometer of that prosperity was seen in the postwar
1946 and grew every year but one until a peak was reached in 1957 when the
birth rate reached 1.837 million."29 The veteran of World War II who
returned after years abroad and remade his society to work in the orderly
fashion that he had grown accustomed to. He had faith in the technology,
Despite the economic and social gains, the popular mood was often downbeat.
In the decade of the 1950's people were afraid of the enemy and the bomb and
even those that had supplied the enemy with the bomb.
The eras' most popular author was Mickey Spillane. He was very much
in tune with the zeitgeist of society, and much like Sam Spade was to the late
1930's and early 1940's, his Mike Hammer would be to the popular culture of
"lust" interests. Spillane wrote novels long on sex and violence and short on
logic and perspective, since the only correct perspective is Hammer's. The
villains are ineffective figures, as are the police and any other authority
figure, neither one capable of withstanding the gale force that is Mike
Hammer. The character clearly touched a nerve in the public. He was a perfect
foil for Spillane's readers and their collective anger and fear that revolved
around women, who were the primary villains in Spillane's fiction, and
The Cold War began as soon as the Soviet Union expanded its borders
into Germany after the fall of Hitler in 1945. It was only four years later, when
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb that they were actually taken
years later that Americans would hold somebody personably responsible for
the Cold War. In 1951 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were tried, convicted and
Russians regarding the United States nuclear program. 30 The general mood
was shattered further by the effect of the Korean War between 1950-1953. The
prolonged fighting gave fuel to the domestic paranoia of the Red Scare.
The HUAC committee hearings, which had begun shortly after the
war, and continued throughout much of the 1950's, sought to weed out
target for their rhetoric. Edward Dymytrick's, who directed the 1947 film
Crossfire, was tried shortly after the release of the film, in front of the
congressional hearing, and like other "members of the "Hollywood Ten' [was]
or not, "during the period 1947-1956. . .there were 2,700 dismissals and 12,000
The difference, between a pre-war thriller like The Maltese Falcon and
Kiss Me Deadly and Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon are as different as the
"World War II caused a temporary reversal in the long term historical decline
of the traditional male role and of the shorter-term, more specific crises of the
depression."34 The economy was righted and men returned from the war
greatly changed.
The 1950's also saw theories of masculine role development that added
too close of an attachment with their mothers as young boys. Women did not
novel Kiss Me Deadly. Written at the height of the Cold War, and in the
middle of the Korean War, the novel holds to a different cultural standard
than Aldritch's movie, though only three years separate them in time.
Aldritch brought his own highly critical approach to the story by commenting
the primary criticism of Hammer in the hands of the films' female characters
murdered at the beginning of the movie, tells him shortly before, "You're
one of those self-indulgent males who thinks of nothing else but his clothes,
remarks to Velda his faithful secretary, "You're never around when I need
you." She quips back, "You never need me when your around."39 Again this
individualistic nature of the Spillane hero and the callousness with which he
Spillane's character and a Playboy male."40 A jet-set man's man who has time
for a martini and a cigar, but little time for the drudgery of domestic life. It is
precisely during this time that Hugh Hefner is creating a scandal with the
of the modern man had changed greatly in the ensuing years between
film. The assumption in the book, along with the particulars of the film noir
genre, is that Hammer's secretary Velda is in the same vein as Spade's Effie
Perrine. Like Effie, Velda is the virginal love interest for the roving
work, the virginal woman more than holds her own as a competent private
investigator in her own right. She in fact comes off as one of the only other
is also used differently. She is more than willing to use force of violence to get
her way. The "iconography of violence (primarily guns) is a specific symbol of
women that allows us into the subtext and explains how they are perceived by
Much of the meaning of the movie lies squarely in the plot. Kiss Me
Deadly begins as a search for the killers of the beautiful and intelligent
Christina that Mike Hammer befriends at the beginning of the novel. Where
movie and novel differ is in the antagonists. In the novel, Hammer's search
leads him to her ties to the Mafia and stolen drugs hidden that were she had
movies"42 the box in Aldritch's film becomes, what Hammer refers to as, the
willing to sell nuclear material on the open market to the highest bidder. The
movie ends with a nuclear meltdown and the supposed death of everyone
14 years, Sam Spade's search for justice as a had lost all meaning with the
resentment that many people shared living in the 1950's. This disparity of
vision, between novel and film, shows a great change between just three
short years in the 1950's and opens the door for more radical discourse to
"Big false front that was just so dreary and depressing. O.K. they [his
parents] grew up in the depression and they went through the War
and they wanted this thing that was so tight and unthreatening and
flat and they wanted a dull lifestyle. Perry Como and this Ozzie &
Harriet shell that we grew up in. The whole thing had this creepy,
It was this creepy and nightmarish quality that would seep through,
not only the work of Robert Aldritch, but also in that of Orson Welle's in his
Touch of Evil. It was filmed in the twilight of Welles' Hollywood career and
As Orson Welles staggers to his death at the end of the film, his
equally biting epitaph. "He was some kind of man."44 Welles plays Hank
town and running schemes that create a web of intrigue and corruption that
cigar constantly in place, and cuts an imposing figure despite his pronounced
limp. He is a fallen man, torn by not only the murder of his wife but his
inability to find and convict her killers. Though he is the villain of the
classic film noir protagonist and gave the genre a worthy epitaph.
This, Welle's last American movie was a squalid crime movie that
tapped into the seediness that lay just below the surface of late 1950's
American society. In late 1956, when a 29 year old New York student, named
show Twenty-One it created a scandal that rocked a nation that had grown to
As the Eisenhower era was coming to a close the society was also
begin in earnest on December 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her
out of a total black population of 50,000" 46that would eventually break the
color barrier in the deep South. It would bring Martin Luther King onto the
national stage. The Kinsey Report, which was published in 1948, would
herald an entirely new classification of modern sexuality, not only for men
but also for women. He established a scientific basis of male sexuality that was
not limited to an "either/or" classification. As Kinsey put it, men were not
Revolution, and in part influence other political and social reforms that
movement.
By the time Orson Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil was released, the era
of the classic noir thriller would be over. Touch of Evil reflected the changing
society and 1950's era view of masculinity The "crack-pot sheriff who
The Maltese Falcon . . .[whose] cool outsiders view of the criminal scene is
heroic ideal that Hammet so eloquently wrote about in Red Harvest, and was
put to film in John Huston's adaptation of The Maltese Falcon was brought
to its logical conclusion in lieu of the massive changes that four decades
brought. The noir cycle runs in a direct line from the investigator of 1941 to
Although Touch of Evil ended the cycle, its influences would be great.
Every few years a revival of the film noir "genre" would appear and these
new would use some of the same themes and many of the images and
archetypes that the classic noirs used. In Robert Altman's 1973 film The Long
This self-referential nature of the new noir films being made is what
distinguishes them from the classic noirs. The cultural underpinnings that
held film noir together no longer existed. The genre had fulfilled its role,
which was "to create the specific malaise and to drive home a social criticism
Touch of Evil confirm its end. As Joe Jackson so eloquently put in his song, "Real Men":
Take your mind back-I don't know when. Sometime when it always
se be just us and them. Girls that wore pink and girls that wore blue.
Boys that always grew up better men than me and you. What's a
The song brings up the hidden cultural nostalgia for "simpler times" of
the 1950's and the nostalgia that often revolves around these outmoded
masculine and feminine role models. It also confronts these stereotypes with
some pointed imagery. Jackson seems to be saying that we may often want to return to a
simpler time when roles were more clearly defined, but with that clarity of
referred to culturally fails to take into account the general trend of American
masculinity. Societal mores and gender roles were changing long before
4Janey Place, "Women In Film Noir," in E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Women in Film
Press,1998), 33.
7Ibid., 195.
8 Ibid., 194.
9 Ibid., 192.
Document, 1993.
13 Ibid.., 201
14 Ibid.., 206
15 Joseph H. Pleck , "The Theory of Male Sex-Role Identity: Its Rise And Fall,
1936 to the Present", in Harry Brod, ed., The Making of Masculinities: The
New Men's Studies, (Winchester, Mass.: Allen & Unwin Inc. , 1987), 21
16 James Naremore, More than the Night: Film Noir And Its Contexts,
Brothers,1941)
20Ibid., 47.
21 Nicholas Christopher, Somewhere Iin the Night: Film Noir And The
American City, (New York: Henry Holt and Comany, Inc., 1997), 2.
22 Ibid.
23 Bruce Crowther, Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror, (New York: The
24 William J. O'Neill, American High: The Years of Confidence, (New York: The
Free Press,1986), 1
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 17
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid. 160
31 Ibid. 123
32 Ibid. 162
34 Joseph H. Pleck , "The Theory of Male Sex-Role Identity: Its Rise And Fall,
1936 to the Present", in Harry Brod, ed., The Making of Masculinities : the New
35 Ibid., 31
36Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39Ibid.
Document, 1993.
46Ibid.
48 Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1981),
12.
49 Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen, 372
51Ibid.
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